Reminiscing
by jordie78
Summary: Pirates of the Caribbean. A pirate's thoughts on mutiny and its punishment.


This little story's been bugging me ever since I saw Pirates for the first time. I've seen it three times now, and I've finally gotten around to writing it. It's pretty short, one chapter thing, and it jumps around a bit, but it was fun to write anyways.  
  
Anyways. Back to the usual stuff. Nothing related to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean belongs to me. No characters. No plot. Nada.  
  
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The little fish darted from place to place in its relentless search for food. It wasn't picky, any food would do. This being the case, the fish approached the floating corpse of a man, anchored to the ocean floor. The fish swam up to the man's gaunt face, willing to try a bite, and was spooked by the way his eyelids flew open. The man frowned and shook his dark mane, sending the fish to search for a target less intimidating.  
  
The man sighed, though no stream of bubbles escaped from him to attest to that. Those had stopped long ago. How long? Who knew? Days? Weeks?  
  
Years? Hard to tell; he was down too far. No sunrise, no sunset to mark the days.  
  
The days since he was sentenced to this fate. Sentenced for defending the rights of a friend.  
  
One Jack Sparrow.  
  
The captain of the ship, The Black Pearl. Or, former captain, at least. Until Barbossa came along.  
  
Barbossa had rallied the crew, and conned Sparrow into giving up the location of the treasure. Conned him, then left him to die on a desolate little island, the aftermath of a mutiny.  
  
He had gone along with it, suspecting, but not believing the fate the crew would give their captain. Jack's curses and shouts as his ship sailed away without him would stick in his mind forever. And forever was a long time.  
  
The man slumped against his bonds. That was a long time ago. By now, Jack would have used the single shot in his "complementary" pistol to end his suffering, and to what end? The man sneered, would've growled in rage had the environment permitted it. Jack's dead, the Pearl's sailed off, and he's still pinned to the bloody ocean floor because of his rashness.  
  
He'd defended his friend, long after the island sank below the horizon. His repeated, "We shouldn't've done it, should've stuck to the Code," irritated his crewmates to no end.  
  
They tolerated it, as well as pirates are capable of tolerating, at least. Tolerated it until they found the treasure.  
  
The legendary treasure of Cortez. Rare riches. Ancient riches.  
  
Cursed riches.  
  
Greedily, they took the lot. Took it and squandered it away. His own blasted guilt lead him to accept only one medallion.  
  
One was enough.  
  
Oh, he remembered the moment they began to realize the curse was real. A stolen bushel of apples, if he remembered right. Bright green apples, perfectly ripe, with their crunchy skin and the sour-sweet zip of the juice. . .denied. They could see the apples, feel them, hold them, but they couldn't smell them, couldn't taste them.  
  
He remembered taking a bite, to have it dissolve to ashes in his mouth, remembered trying to rid himself of that horrid feeling with a flask of whiskey, to have it pour right through him.  
  
And he remembered that night. When the full moon showed them for what they really were. Remembered stepping onto the deck, and seeing his flesh evaporate instantly, until his baggy clothes fell limp and empty on his bony frame. Remembered the horrified expressions of the faces of his various crewmates. And remembered how he had sent his medallion to his only child at the last village they came across.  
  
He had snapped at that moment. Shouted that it was because they had broken the Code, that this was their punishment. That they all deserved it for what they had done to Captain Jack Sparrow.  
  
That didn't sit well with the crew.  
  
That didn't sit well at all.  
  
With Barbossa in the lead, they attacked, overcame, and disarmed him. Held him down as they tied his arms and legs together. Their malicious laughs cut through the night air as they tied one end of a rope to his shoes, the other to an iron cannon.  
  
Their evil laughs were the last thing he heard before he crashed through the surface of the ocean, struggling uselessly against the ropes. He could feel the great pressure squeezing the air from his lungs as he sank. Felt it squeezing, engulfing, killing him.  
  
But he didn't die.  
  
That was the final prong of the curse, making the thieves dead among the living. They couldn't die, but they couldn't fully live. And he couldn't help wondering if he had passed his curse to his wife and son by gifting them with the bloody medallion.  
  
The man looked up, spotting a stray gleam of light from the sun above. Tired of his watery grave, he strained against the sea-soaked ropes yet again, as he had done many times before. To his great surprise and relief, they gave out; the long exposure to the open water had worn them down, weakened them.  
  
He ducked down, using his newly freed hands to loosen the rope around his legs. The expertise born of a sailor's life made quick work of the knot, and he quickly slipped out of his rotten boots.  
  
The man smiled and kicked upwards, towards the surface. He didn't need to breathe, but years spent underwater made him desperate for the ocean breeze and the sun's warm caress, even if he couldn't really feel either.  
  
His head broke the water and he shook his long, dripping hair out of his eyes. He was just in time to see the sunrise. A brilliant, ocean sunrise, with the water catching the crimson rays and tossing them back to the endless orange sky.  
  
The man closed his eyes, savoring the moment, before turning his back to the sun and starting to swim. It would be a long trip, but William Turner, more often known as Bootstrap Bill, would go any distance to recover his old life, and find out what became of his son. 


End file.
